The first verse for Close Your Eyes came to me one evening in 1973 when I was nursing my first child, Dan. Watching him fall asleep, I thought about dreams he might have some day, and that’s when the first two lines of Close Your Eyes went through my head.  “Close your eyes and you can be, sound asleep in an apple tree. Or, if you like, on a ship at sea.”  The idea for the poem, however, was only the beginning. Writing the rest of it took months, and I acquired great respect for writers like Rosemary Wells and Mother Goose, who could write rhyming children’s verses with grace, humor and simplicity. Phyllis J. Fogelman, Editor-in Chief at Dial Books for Young Readers, guided my revisions. In the end, I learned that the simplest kind of poem can sometimes be the hardest to write, but also the most rewarding.